Racing Forum

Pizzola & Contrarian Theory

Posted By: Jesse F. Knight
Date: 14 May 02, 9:36 pm

In Response To: What is CONTRARIAN- about his theories? (nt) (D)

Well, first off, let me say that Michael Pizzola seems to be evolving as a handicapper, as I suspect all good handicappers do. So I won't comment on his latest book, where he discusses his ideas about fulcrum, velocity, etc. For this post I will stick to his contrarian ideas.

Basically, what he does is look at how the general public and how general handicappers bet, then he looks for horses that are as good as those, but are overlooked. He looks for contrary attributes. Keep in mind he spends a lot of space developing these theories that I am going to give you in a few hundred words, so I am not going to defend his views in these few lines.

The three areas he looks at are the Beyers numbers, form and class.

What he says is the general public will look at the last race or two for the highest Beyer numbers and that, generally, will be the favorite. I have found that to be the case. Not always but generally.

Let me give you an example. Let us say that you have a race with ten horses. The general public will look at the last two races of the ten horses and look for the highest Beyer number. Let us say it is 80. That becomes the favorite and rarely will you ever bet on it. Then he will look at the remaining nine horses. He will look for a Beyer number that is equal to or higher than the favorite. For this example, let us say that there are four horses that have an 81 or higher, maybe up to 84. BUT those Beyer numbers all occurred 7 or 8 or 9 races ago.

Next he looks at class. He looks for horses that appear to be moving up in class but really have raced at that class before. Let us say that the race is for 40K claimers. He looks over those horses and tries to spot races where there are horses (or a horse) racing at that level or, even better, at a higher level, but in PPs that have long gone by. Let's say he find two or three horses that were at the 50K level but in much older races.

The third ingredient, finally, is form. You don't want to bet on a horse that has in the last couple of races won. Instead, you want to look for horses that did indeed win, but some races ago.

So what I end up with is a horse that has a Beyer number higher than the favorite (84-80, I think I said above); a horse that has raced at a higher level than it has today; and a horse that has won in the past. But all of this has not happened in the last two races.

Get the idea? The public is likely to bet on horses that have recent high Beyer numbers or horses that won in the last race or two or horses that are dropping in class or staying in class. YOU on the other hand are looking for horses that have equal or higher Beyer numbers but that occurred several races ago. YOU are looking for horses who haven't won recently, but have won in the past. And YOU are looking for horses who have raced at this level, but not for several races.

You are going against the general public or against most handicappers, for that matter. Hence the idea of the approach being contrarian.

Usually, using this approach I will come up with one horse in a race that fits this contrarian criteria. Occasionally two. Sometimes none.

I just glanced over my records, and I see that my average payout is $16.12. In other words, my average win odds is 7-1. So you can see that generally you are betting on long shot. I want to quickly say that obviously the wins are far fewer and further between. Nonetheless, the ROI is 19.4%. However, as I have said before, I am still testing the system, and as far as I am concerned, the numbers are far from conclusive. And this is just the basics of the approach. I have a betting system that is not flat, for instance.

Again, I am not defending this approach. I merely raised a question of what other's opinions of the approach were.

Jesse F. Knight

Messages In This Thread

Contrarian Approach & Pizzola -- Jesse F. Knight -- 14 May 02, 2:45 pm

Pizzola -- D -- 14 May 02, 4:53 pm

Pizzola -- Mark Poe -- 14 May 02, 6:05 pm

What is CONTRARIAN- about his theories? (nt) -- D -- 14 May 02, 6:17 pm

Pizzola & Contrarian Theory -- Jesse F. Knight -- 14 May 02, 9:36 pm

Thank you Jesse- great post-- -- D -- 15 May 02, 2:49 pm

Yes, but . . . -- Jesse F. Knight -- 15 May 02, 3:21 pm

Sure- that makes sense-- -- D -- 15 May 02, 4:05 pm

Racing Forum is maintained by Pi Yee Press